Most companies with nearly 5,000 employees have a recruiting army. Green Thumb Industries has 12 people, a network of cannabis dispensaries spanning the country, and Joey Niemczyk, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, figuring out how to make it work.
Joey started her career watching her immigrant parents build something from nothing, and that shaped everything about how she thinks about people and opportunity. She learned to recruit at staffing agencies, sharpened her instincts at a boutique firm serving high-growth tech companies, and eventually landed at one of the most unusual talent challenges in the industry: building a TA function for a cannabis company that's growing faster than most teams can hire.
Today, she shares how she leads a lean team without losing the human element, why she thinks the best hires rarely come through the traditional funnel, and what she told her team to do differently once AI started rewriting every resume in the pile.
You'll also hear:
Connect with Joey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joey-niemczyk
Learn more about Green Thumb Industries: www.gtigrows.com
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[00:00:00] Joey Niemczyk: Surround yourself with the right people. Be comfortable saying the thing that you're afraid of because sometimes that opens the best doors.Â
[00:00:08] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter. And on Talent All-Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businessesÂ
Today's talent all-star is Joey Niemczyk, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Green Thumb Industries, a cannabis company that grows, manufactures, and sells products through its own network of retail dispensaries.
Before that, she led client services at a search firm, spent time as a technical recruiter, and even got her start in HR at a steakhouse in her hometown of Chicago, which honestly might be the best origin story we've heard on this show. Joey Niemczyk, welcome to Talent All-Stars.Â
[00:00:52] Joey Niemczyk: Thanks so much for having me, Dave.
[00:00:54] Dave Travers: Delighted to have you. So, I wanna dive into all the things you're doing today, but first I wanna hit the rewind button a little bit on how did you start getting into HR and into talent acquisition? Where did it all begin?Â
[00:01:08] Joey Niemczyk: You know, the path into talent acquisition wasn't ever planned for me, which I don't think is too unfamiliar of a story for many people in this space, but it's built entirely on relationships and, you know, I think it's part of my roots, my story.
I grew up watching my parents navigate life as immigrants, moving here from another country, and financial stability wasn't ever a given, and they were entrepreneurs themselves. And so I grew up with that, and I realized the power of people, the power of relationships, the power of having to figure it out on my own, frankly.
Figuring out if I wanted to go to college, how am I gonna do that with the support that I did have? That experience has really shaped how I think about TA and think about all the different people that are trying to get their foot in the door, or how they're trying to make their way into the company, or whatever it might be, because I really think sometimes the best hires don't come through the traditional funnel.
Sometimes they're built through those trusts, through those relationships, through those handshakes in other rooms, and they shouldn't be missed out on. So I don't know. I realized there was a career there, and here I am.Â
[00:02:19] Dave Travers: That's awesome. Do you remember the moment when you realized that sometimes the non-traditional path or the non-traditional hire was the one that really paid off? Is there a moment when that clicked for you?Â
[00:02:31] Joey Niemczyk: Yeah, there's like a few stories earlier in my career. There's something about getting the match of a person to a business right, and then hearing that click, that sharpness of that click. And I remember working just even within staffing agencies and seeing that happen, but then later with a boutique firm that was primarily working with growth companies, and that's when I got hooked.
During that time was watching these growth companies have these like big goals, big milestones, really wanting to push the envelope, and it was primarily in the technology industry. But man, getting some of those engineers hire right, getting those operational hires right, seeing that success of those companies now today, 15 years later, even, it's pretty cool to watch.
[00:03:20] Dave Travers: There's something so satisfying in the talent acquisition space about going to a hiring manager and saying, "I know you said you wanted 10 to 15 years of super specific experience, but I just met this person. You're going to love them. Don't overlook them." And then coming back to them six months later and being like, "See? I was right." Like, there's something incredibly powerful about that.Â
[00:03:44] Joey Niemczyk: Couldn't say it better myself. It's a real, it's a real vindication.Â
[00:03:47] Dave Travers: It's a rush, yeah. Yeah. And it, it gives me the feels just thinking about it. I totally agree with that. Okay, so then you get into this, you get the good feelings that come from making those connections to people to opportunity, and then all of a sudden, leadership starts getting to be part of your job, not just being the individual contributor.
How does that come about, and did you know you wanted to grow into leading teams of recruiters and talent acquisition teams, or was that something that was more of a surprise to you as well?Â
[00:04:18] Joey Niemczyk: Yeah, that's a good question. I always knew I wanted to be a leader. I didn't know how grossly unprepared I was to be a leader.
[00:04:27] Dave Travers: Did you know how grossly unprepared everybody else was who was a leader, though?
[00:04:29] Joey Niemczyk: Yeah, no, it's like, yeah. That's a funny way of putting it. But you don't realize that until you're in it, and- Sure ... I don't know. I've made a lot of mistakes, uh, early in my career. I put too much pressure on my team versus knowing how to communicate and tell the story of the data and partner with leaders.
And leadership requires you to tell the story. They want to see the data. They want to see you advocate for what the business needs, including your own people. And right, wrong, or indifferent, I thought if I just can solve this problem in my square footage and not have to expand it, and that wasn't the right way to do it.
[00:05:09] Dave Travers: What is the right way to do it? Like, if you wanna lead but you don't know, you know you're not prepared, but you wanna do it anyways, what's the right way to do it?Â
[00:05:17] Joey Niemczyk: You know, it sounds cheeky, but having a good manager or a good mentor outside of your company, a good manager inside your company, is such a difference. I've kept mentors outside of my company, just keeping me honest, keeping me focused, making sure it is what I wanna be doing, having them just be good thought starters and collaborators and critical thinking outside of those sessions.
But look, the real answer is you have to get to know your leaders. You have to understand what the business pressures are, what the business needs, and start knowing how to tell the data to back into that. And so that is the narrative that drives what leaders are able to accomplish. It is the narrative that gets your teams to get behind you.
It's the narrative that supports you as you're navigating it. And so the early days at Green Thumb were hard, especially as we were experiencing a lot of growth. But through that self-awareness early, what I didn't know, finding at some point the ability to know how to ask for help, it really got me to where I am here today, which by no means is an excellent leader, but a little bit more years under my belt than before.
[00:06:29] Dave Travers: I don't know. We're not gonna let you get away with that humble approach to your leadership. We'll come back to that, though. Okay, but talking about asking for help and having mentors, how do you do that? 'Cause that sounds amazing. Like, I have a situation where I could really use talking to people who aren't at the company, but who I could talk this through with. If you don't have that, how do you develop that? How do you get started?Â
[00:06:51] Joey Niemczyk: Oh, man, I think I, like, fell on my face too many times and realized I couldn't do it alone, but I don't know that I recommend that. Um, I don't know if that's the way to do it, right? Like, I think you have to be willing to want to change and willing to want to be better and have a growth mindset and curiosity that drives you to say, when you look back on this time, how do you wanna be looked back upon?
And early, even at my days at Green Thumb, one of our leaders said, "One of the most powerful things you could say is, 'I don't know.'" And that was a scary thing to say for a long time, but then, with permission, hearing that around your leadership of, okay, this is the type of culture that says, "I don't know," is a good thing.
Let's talk about it. Ask for help. It allowed us to solve problems much faster than trying to work on it in a silo. So I suppose my advice to TA leaders is surround yourself with the right people. Be comfortable saying the thing that you're afraid of, because sometimes that opens the best doors.Â
[00:07:55] Dave Travers: Totally, and I think it's a great way to lead also because if you're leading a team, and somebody's lost and doesn't know what to do, you don't want them to come in and pretend like they know what they're doing. They want... You want them to ask for help. And so if you do it, it creates the permission structure that someone can come to you and do it.Â
[00:08:13] Joey Niemczyk: That's exactly right.Â
[00:08:14] Dave Travers: Okay, so the other thing about cultivating mentors, I don't know if you found this yourself, but what I've found is, like, a lot of the best practice mentor playbook is you cultivate these people over years, and you, you know, establish.
You give before you get. You know, you go out and put yourself out there and meet all these people, and that's all true, and that's all great. But when you're in a pinch, and you need some advice on something, you'd be amazed if you just call somebody up and say, "Hey, we met once 18 months ago," or, "We've never met and, you know, somebody told me you're really smart at this or whatever, and I really need five minutes of your advice."
You'll be amazed how often somebody's willing, and in fact, it's, like, the best part of their day to do that.Â
[00:08:56] Joey Niemczyk: I can't say it better myself. I've gotten those phone calls. You feel the challenge that the other person is dealing with, and you want to help them get out of that muck. I mean, I remember at Green Thumb, early days, it was, must have been 2019.
We were scaling at an immense pace. I imagine we probably had about 250 to 400 employees, and we probably had 400 open roles at the time, which is normal for us today. But at the time, we had 400 open roles, three people recruiting on it, and I just remember calling people and just saying, "I don't know how to do this, and my team is buried."
I felt like my head was spinning. I felt there wasn't enough hours in the day. And man, I made some really good phone calls during that time and got a lot of help along the way. And you're right, just making those phone calls, even to the people that you haven't spoken to in a long time, it makes a difference.
[00:10:00] Dave Travers: Totally does. Totally does. I couldn't agree more. Okay, so now here you are, you're a leader, and you are scaling to hiring 400 people at a time, and you're dealing with the growing team and growing systems and all that. We're in this world of technology enabling us to change lots of things. We're bombarded with messages implicitly that, like, you're behind, everyone else is using AI more than you are.
You're not using technology fast enough. I know it's a people-driven business, but how do we get more efficient? All those things. How do you decide where do I start? Like, there's this cacophony of messages that you're behind, you're not doing enough, and how do you decide I can't do everything all at once?
There's a lot of noise, probably, if I were to pull on all those threads. Not all that technology's gonna do what it promises, I'm guessing. So how do you, how do you approach that? How do you put one foot in front of the other?Â
[00:10:58] Joey Niemczyk: I mean, the topic of AI and recruiting is Right here, like just constantly in my face.
For me, we leaned in. We leaned in. Our leadership is interested. They want us to be curious, and I do believe in the power of AI in recruiting, right? I just had a think tank for an hour with our team yesterday, talking about it. And for us, I don't want us to wait by the sidelines to see how this plays out.
I want to help shape what it looks like and have a point of view as an organization, as how Green Thumb leverages it, but also keeps a human-centered point of view to how we bring our talent in. So in practice, frankly, we leverage the capabilities that our vendors have built, and that looks very different in very different ways, whether that's on-demand video interviewing, candidates being able to self-schedule, automation through stage transitions, talent rediscovery, like leveraging CRMs of our software communications, and AI for sourcing.
We use interview transcription services to make it easier on our team. And I think what's notable to say is it's helped us with the top of the funnel, certainly, but I also think AI is being used by our candidates as it should be, I think, in my point of view. You know, like your strength isn't to build a resume or to know how to write a cover letter or to know how to do these things.
So I'm expecting that people would be leveraging this Fantastic tool that's available to them. So to me now, at our scale, I'm encouraging my team to slow down as they're evaluating talent. So try to block out the AI noise, know it's there, but slow down and, and how do you situationally and technically evaluate talent to ensure that you're not just checking the boxes, but that you're really getting to know what a human's motivations are, what their accomplishments are, how they've succeeded in their career, where have they made mistakes, and point out things on their resumes.
So we're leveraging it. I think people oversell it. I think people are dismissing it. I think we're cautious around it, but we use that as a collaborator, not our critical thinker. And with a business that has 5,000 employees and only 12 people recruiting, we have to.Â
[00:13:30] Dave Travers: Yeah, absolutely. So in a world that you just very eloquently described, where signals like the crispness of the written communication in a resume, for example, is no longer a signal of the human being, it's a signal of the AI model that they're using.
If you're leaning in and you're spending more time getting to know the person looking for the human signals, what are the human signals that you're looking for that separate the, the what's the AI-supported noise or non-signal from the true human being you're thinking about hiring, and what's a real signal of their capability?
[00:14:07] Joey Niemczyk: Man, that's a good question, and I think we're learning that every day right now. I have a colleague on my team that's throwing resumes into AI to say how much AI was used on this because they're too perfect. So we're learning. I think, look, I'll give some watch-outs. Overly bolded resumes, overly perfected resumes just tend to raise an eyebrow, but I think it's the things that you'll always sense through.
So we have application questions that we like to see somebody's motivations on. We've-- Since we've started at Green Thumb, we've had an application question that asks somebody how they've acted in the and beyond. And as a company that's gone through extreme growth, that's a bit of our secret sauce. We like to know what people have done that's outside of potentially their work scope to say, "How have you identified problems?
Or how have you drawn curiosity? How do you act in this and beyond when you see something and act upon it?" And our team is trained to look at that question. And many times, that's sometimes a filter of what we move forward with and what we don't. But if I had the magic answers to how to read the resume perfectly right now, I don't.
I think candidates are gonna get smarter. I think recruiting teams are gonna get smarter. But I think right now we're all learning.Â
[00:15:29] Dave Travers: Yeah. I think you're smart to focus on the conversation rather than the document, and you're smart to asking people about it and beyond, where there's less training data out there for AI to have coached you into a great answer for that.
So if your question is, "How have you overcome a difficult problem?" There's probably, you know, a good chance that you're gonna get a very coached re- answer to that. But if you are asking a more original questions that get at a similar concept, I think you are onto something there. So I love that. Okay. So now you're implementing technology.
You're building this team of 12 people, this mighty team of 12 who's supporting thousands in a growing company. How do you think about, and how should your colleagues out there at other companies think about, how do you measure the TA team? Like, if your boss asks you or your next phone call to be a mentor is like, "Hey, I'm being asked, like, how should I measure my team?"
What's the smart answer? How should a TA team put out there as like, this is the way to measure us?Â
[00:16:32] Joey Niemczyk: I really stand by this. I think a lot of recruiting is measured in data, and I can typically tell if a search is going well or not well purely based on the funnel. How many candidates are in the funnel, how many are applicants versus source talent, what that time looks like between stages.
But that doesn't tell all the story, right? So while of course, time to fill, your quality of hire, sourced talent volume, all of these things tell the story, and I have a tremendous partner in people operations that monthly pulls a report and shows what the number of hires are and LinkedIn activity, and all these different things that help us guide us.
I really do think that there's the behavioral element of how a TA partner operates, and hearing how hiring managers give feedback, their response rates, what the-- some of that quantitative feedback that you get from your field managers, from those partners to say, "I love working with this partner, and here's why."
We also measure those things through surveys and other ways. And so we have this great quantitative measure of time to fill and data, but we also have this great qualitative measure of how the team is actually responding, because sometimes a role could be open for a long time. That doesn't mean that the TA partner isn't effective.There's a lot of components to that.Â
[00:18:08] Dave Travers: I think that's so right. The powerful thing, you've talked about it a couple times, is the ability to show the data and then tell a story. That's what makes the data stick and makes it fit into some framework that someone can recall, especially a busy senior person who's like, you know, drowned in data every day, is if you can say, "Hey, look, like the top of the funnel is looking good.
We've got thirty-four percent more applicants than we did a year ago for each role on average. That's great, but that thirty-four percent is filtering through. Let me tell you about the hire we made yesterday and her amazing story." Like, that's what brings the data alive, and when you can tell a story and bring it to life like that is the winning formula.
I love that. I love that. Okay, we always end these episodes with a rapid-fire round. So I want you to imagine you are grabbing a cup of coffee or getting in the elevator, and it's just you and the CEO, all of a sudden there in an impromptu, and the CEO says, "Hey, Joey, you know, I was thinking the other day, we're a growing organization.
We got thousands of people now. We're gonna grow by thousands more as we accomplish all of our goals. I'm interviewing people all the time for board roles, and people are interviewing me as a customer, you know, or as a-- thinking about joining the company. Help me be a better interviewer." What's your number one tip, Joey?
[00:19:29] Joey Niemczyk: It's prepare. That's what it is. It's prepare. You have to know it's a two-way street when you're talking to a candidate. You also have to know that they're evaluating you. So make sure you know your side of the business. Make sure you know what you're going to ask them. Walk in being curious, engaged, all of those things, but have your hard questions ready.
I don't like softball interviews. I like a tough interview. I like an interview that might kind of have a bit of a reputation maybe sometimes of scaring people away from Green Thumb, because I don't think it's always for everyone. That's okay. As a growth company, I think it's important that people know what they're doing.
So prepare and know it's a two-way street. Know that the candidate could just as easily be a customer walking into one of our Rise dispensaries a month later talking about our brands to somebody else. So you have to leave a lasting impression on both sides.Â
[00:20:25] Dave Travers: I love being a tough interviewer and being prepared to do that.
I think that is so smart. And people are wanting to know that they're, I think, you know, it seems like it's a harsh thing to do, maybe in theory or something, but they wanna know that they're good enough to pass a tough interview. Like, if you think about the long term, they don't wanna think that they got in 'cause it was easy.
They got in 'cause it was hard, and they were good enough. And so if you frame it that way to them, it's like, "Listen, I'm, I've looked at your resume. I know you've got the skills to be a B- at this role, but I wanna see if you can do the A+ job at this role." Like, all of a sudden, that invites them to rise to the occasion. I love that. I love that.Â
[00:21:02] Joey Niemczyk: Yeah.Â
[00:21:03] Dave Travers: Okay. One more rapid-fire round, which is this world we described earlier, is changing all the time. So the CEO walks up to you and says, "Hey, Joey, like, you know, you have this growing team in talent acquisition, what's the skill we need to develop in talent acquisition more of than we have today?
And as we grow your team from 12 to 24 or whatever it ends up being over time, like, what are the skills we need more of in the future than we have today?Â
[00:21:32] Joey Niemczyk: The most important thing, in my opinion, for a talent acquisition partner to be effective with a business that's growing is their connection to the business.
And so, of course, I can teach, and people have the skill on how to interview, how to evaluate talent. That's core to the, what the role is. But I think the secret sauce is if you really understand how a business operates, you're sitting in on those town halls, you're with those departments, you understand what their business challenges are, you're much stronger at evaluating that talent.
So my whole point, the reason our team is called partners is 'cause they're in there, they're in with the business, and they should be. And I'm elated when I hear, "Oh, I'm going to Minnesota to go sit on site with the team for this week because they're going through extreme growth." Amazing. You're gonna sell and know how to talk about this company and evaluate for the culture far better than doing it from behind a screen.
So you can't lose that human element, and you've got to be connected to the business to know how to do it.Â
[00:22:32] Dave Travers: You're gonna know so much more about whether someone's gonna be successful sitting at the table they need to sit at if you've sat at that table yourself. That is a magical piece of advice. Joey Niemczyk, you are a talent all-star. Thank you so much for joining us today.Â
[00:22:47] Joey Niemczyk: Thanks, Dave. It was a pleasure being here.
[00:22:53] Dave Travers: That's Joey Niemczyk. She's the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Green Thumb Industries. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the episode description. And just a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube as well on the official ZipRecruiter channel. And if you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email to talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com.
I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars, and we'll see you right back here next time.